Comment by toomuchtodo

You’d bootstrap, and then have future employees buy into a restricted share class (you could also take on debt to fund and personally guarantee until you can pay it back with future revenue, or find someone wealthy to write an investment check [1]). You're aligning incentives and sharing in the economic success, but using share restrictions to prevent, broadly speaking, shenanigans that are not aligned with your desired outcome. You wouldn't want shares transferred without board approval, for example. Craigslist was a cautionary tale about this [2], make sure your agreements are drafted to withstand potential adversaries. The culture should be clearly communicated about this when hiring and onboarding.

Check out Certified EO [3] [4], they can help you. Maybe reach out to DHH or Jason Fried on this too, 37signals is a similar model of staying small and and profitable [5] [6].

[1] https://medium.com/signal-v-noise/the-deal-jeff-bezos-got-on...

[2] https://www.delawarelitigation.com/2010/09/articles/chancery...

[3] https://www.certifiedeo.com/

[4] https://www.certifiedeo.com/why-employee-ownership

[5] https://x.com/jasonfried/status/1887964677344489574 | https://archive.today/dZwKz

[6] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=171325